See, here's the thing about symbols:

Christopher Hitchens is dead.  Facebook was alive with the news for, uhm, about a day: "The world is a lesser place without him," some said (though apparently not so lessened that the effects of his demise reverberate beyond several hours).  I'm not too chuffed, but mostly just because I know so little about him, not because I have any particular ax to grind.  However, his death, together with the typical convergence of events or things read that generally lead me to a post like this, have made me think about a few things.

Hitchens wrote a book:  God Is Not Great, in which he asserts his atheism and appears to attempt an undermining of religion.  Apart from the utter futility of such an endeavor (I'm not sure that even God could dissuade just the moderate zealotry (you know, without pressing his "Smite" button, and all); and besides, I mean, c'mon! -- did such an intelligent person as Hitchens really think he could successfully attack and undermine something so essentially illogical with carefully meted and tempered argument, or was he, so much more likely, just trying to sell copy?), he makes some interesting arguments, the vast majority of which I'm not interested in here.  One of his weaker assertions, however, is an attack on the anachronisms--the "ill-carpentered fictions"--of the Bible, which affords a starting point for my discussion.

Let me be the first to say, and despite my love for the Bible, that the tome is chock full of some of the strangest tails and details I've ever come across.  Hitchens thinks so, too (one of the very few upon which we agree).  The Pentateuch, for instance, holds Moses doing and saying some weird stuff--freaky weird, even.  What Hitchens doesn't seem to acknowledge (or, well, he does, but sites it as a further weakness (and I'm not fighting that claim right now)) is the effects of the passage time, one linguistic/cultural and the other human error/interference.  Anyone who studies the Bible will cheerfully acknowledge the dire effect of imperfect people working on or on behalf of the scriptures--the otherwise perfect Word (of course, for most of us, one of the great benefits of the Bible comes directly from the very effort involved in parsing Truth from among all the problems) --not all of whom had good intentions.  But even under the best circumstances, people, despite God's perfection, make mistakes (and those who believe and really think about it will allow that God even permits these mistakes), so many of whom appear in their efforts to forward God's word.  Bigger still, however, than the weakness of even the best-intentioned of men (and there were plenty of malingerers), is the effect of cultural development.  Anachronisms aside, to us today, there's an awful lot, especially from the earliest books of the great Library, that doesn't make much sense and/or contradicts itself.  This brings me to the next of the convergences and closer to my ultimate point.

Languages and cultures shift and change.  Don't believe me (and, crap if you don't, you're freaking obtuse!)?  Just read a week's worth of posts from The Language Log.  Without putting too fine a point on it (and we've talked about it before vis a vis translation) it is essentially impossible--or, at best, impractical--to manage perfect cross-cultural  or cross-language shifts: a translation.  The best we can manage, and we can manage pretty well, is interpretation (hence the art and skill of interpreters against the woeful ineptitude of things like Google Translate and Word's grammar check) --interpretation which requires a ladder into the ether of metalanguage, which we are definitely not going to broach today.  The point is we cannot--EVER--perfectly understand a person of a different language and culture.  Period.  Move this to an extremity of language and culture like that of freaking Moses, and ... well ....  Get the point?

As it's Christmastime, cards and letters are starting to come in from family and friends.  In our house, we post these decoratively upon the cupboards of our kitchen.  Generally, the missives convey family news -- count on my dad to take a different tack (and I don't remember him ever being the one to scribe the annual letter for my folks; how things change!).  He talked about a conversation he and my mom had had regarding the interpretation of a word at the end of "Away in a Manger": "and fit us for heaven," the word fit, particularly, as it ... er ... fits in the line and within the song.  Unfortunately (for the issue at hand here, not the elegant point made by my father in his letter), fit is a pretty boring word, meaning essentially the same thing now as when the song was first published and even three hundred years before that.  The only difference in our uses of fit now as from before is a drop, inasmuch as Lewis Carroll did not mean, or at least did not only mean (most likely he meant both together) fit as a strong, sudden, uncontrollable physical reaction, but a canto: "The Hunting of the Snark, an Agony in Eight Fits."  This difference or change or shift or lack, or whatever you want to call it, in fit's etymology can still be sort of retrofit into the interpretation of the song, at least as a symbol.  And this is the point.

Symbols change just like words and language and culture.  (And I could write a book about this, but we're gonna keep it limited -- hopefully.  Besides, there are others far better qualified than me.)

There are all kinds of symbols, and you should get what I'm talking about by my saying that there are both universal symbols and one-use-only symbols.  The best source I can think of for any symbol--a specific symbol or type of symbol--is literature (go figure).  Authors and poets certainly use both, but the difference should be clear in, say, Catcher in the Rye, where Salinger applies a potentially universal symbol of a cliff and a very specific, one-use-only, symbol of a song lyric.  

(Want more symbols?  Dig out your freshman lit book from high school or even college.  I'd examine my own, but it's buried in the garage.  One in particular that I re-encountered recently is that of bells.  Consider their effect on faeries (or pixies -- you pick), but also in Longfellow's "I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day," Poe's "The Bells," and Tennyson's "Ring Out Wild Bells.")

Symbols like these, universal or not (another universal symbol, perhaps easier to see, is the black bird, used in both Through the Looking Glass and Tortilla Flat, among so many others), remain fixed, at least inasmuch as their value is fully encapsulated by the text of the book.  Regardless of cultural elements connected to the symbols or their cultural sources, the application of the symbols are self-contained.  Well, often.  Not always.  Consider Jane Eyre.  Early in the book, in the red room, there's the nastiness about the chimney.  With the exception of Santa Claus, we've largely lost our superstitions, and therefore associated symbolisms, of chimneys.

This brings me to my gripe.

It really bugs me when hyper-Christians get all bent out of shape about the "real meaning" of Christmas symbols (as distinguished from "the real meaning of Christmas," which is certainly not in dispute here; and the same goes for Easter): the Christmas tree, the yule log, Santa coming down the chimney, wreaths, poinsettias, and so on.  Easter eggs.  Generally, the hyper-Christians' gripes boil down to pagan rituals and druids and fertility rites and, somehow, the consumerism of the Holidays.  (If you're really ambitious, check out the symmetry between the development of our cultural symbols against the history of our English language.  Cool.)

(Are you offended by my coinage of "hyper-Christians"?  I apologize.  Anyway:)

Here's the thing: Sure, go through the histories--which interest me just as much as the next nerd--and, yeah, that's where a lot of this stuff got started.  But that's not what they mean anymore!  Things change!

Are you still scared of witches coming down your chimney?  I've never roasted a chestnut, but chestnuts are much closer to my cultural nostalgia associated with chimneys than hobgoblins.  (Actually, the majority of my  personal associations with chimneys involve me as a kid getting into a heckuva lot of trouble.)

Just because the symbol itself--the physical thing--persists, and entirely by tradition only (a thing much more rigid than whatever that tradition might have stemmed from (consider how many people go to church on Christmas and Easter not because they believe anything in particular--or particularly strongly--but just because that's what you do on Christmas and Easter)) doesn't mean that it's wrong to hold onto that thing!  It doesn't always matter what something means, but that it means something at all.  Think about it: what do the Christmas tree and the presents and the cookies and the fireplace and the wreath, and whatever else, mean--symbolize--for you?

See?  Right there--that internal meaning.  That is what Christmas is all about.  And if you happen to be Christian, it might mean that much more.  And not by compromise between the traditional symbols and the Bible stories, but because symbols change--we change--people change, and what we become--what and who we are--is what is most important.  You might be surprised, but examine yourself against the symbols in your life.  Those symbols probably define you (not you by them, but they as representations of who you are), not because the symbols might have meant something different to someone else sometime across the ages, but because of what it means to you and you alone.

The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana IV -- chapter 3: FLOWERS and MORE FOG

from Benali's edition of Dante's Commedia

So often, chapter titles lend a childish, or, well, a less than sophisticated, sense to a book, not that there's anything wrong with that.  Many of my favorite books, YA or children's, rank right up there with my all-time favorites.  Of "grown-up" books, however, I can only think of a few that manage to use chapter titles especially well: Tortilla Flat, Ender's Game, and, of course, The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana.  In my impatience and eagerness to get to the meat of the next chapter, I often forget to look at the chapter number or, if it's there, the title.  We are now on chapter 3 of Mysterious Flame and only now have I finally looked up at the chapter title.  I flipped back over the first two, and they're great!

1. What is your impression of Yambo's opinion of himself, especially now that he's seen evidence of his past as a businessman and with (though perhaps he's only invented it, as Gratarolo suggests) Sibilla?
2. (I will generally leave issues of Italian grammar aside, like, for instance, the differences between tu and lei and their correlates in French, unless you'd like me to load up each post with bits of Italian minutiae; otherwise, if you have a question about anything like this, please ask.)
3. This chapter makes me really wish I could afford ancient treasure tomes like these!  I am guilty of buying books just because they're pretty, because they feel nice.  I love a library for its smell.  Would I say no to a Nook were it offered me?  Of course not!  But pages and ink and sweat and love packed between stretched, gilt leather covers....  But that's just me.  Is it such a business of passion for Yambo?
4. "Better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all."  As Yambo has forgotten his past and lost the experiences of love with it, from where will new love build or grow or spring [insert your poetry here]?  In a child, love begins as dependence and trust, and therefore is extended--and only ever around the girth of its own selfishness--to parents, guardians, caregivers.
5. "Are there drugs for remembering?" // "Maybe Sibilla..."  What is the emotion he's experiencing toward this girl?
6. So here's the line that provides the chapter's title: "And someone will pluck your flower, mouth of the wellspring, someone who won't even know, a fisher of spongers with take this rare pearl."  The context, of course, provides its own interpretation of jealousy and lust, but there's another use of plucking flowers, or deflowering, which also applies to the source of Yambo's fear--and mixed sense of conquest--for his maybe-relationship with Sibilla.  Also, often, a wellspring is a ready source of ample fog when conditions are right.
7. Issue of translation and plurals: Umberto Eco carefully supervises the translation of each of his works.  He most certainly was aware of the translator's pluralization of palazzo to palazzos, though the "correct" carry-over pluralization would be palazzi.
8. At the time the Lira went out for the Euro, 1000 lira was worth about 65 cents (very approximately) --just to give you an idea.
9. Another brilliant analogy: Yambo compares his loss of past to the loss of the third dimension, leaving everything flat--without depth.
10. Eco ascribes certain fog quotations to certain characters as their favorites.  Is this meant to indicate character traits or the like, or was the determination arbitrary?
11. Ah, that last sentence!

Finally, what do you think of the nickname, Yambo?  I don't have an Italian copy of Mysterious Flame, so I don't know if the original uses the Y or the more appropriate Ia (Italian generally skips y/upsilon), like J, K, X, and W (except for carryovers from English or French or whatever else), which are phonetically useless.  It doesn't make much sense to examine it in English, which shows itself mildly as "I am," and all it's Old Testament weight, though I can't totally disregard it.  As it is, "Io," is Italian's first-person singular pronoun.  Closer to its spelling, however, is the Italian of the poetry term, "iamb," "giambo" in Italian ("iambo," "iambe," and "jambo" in others of the Romance languages), which, in English, is a trochee, but in Italian, as "giambo" is actually three syllables, contains in its first two an iamb.  I don't know.  Names are usually important, but I can't find anything more than this.  Thoughts?

Sunday Poetry XIX -- PRIMO LEVI and SE QUESTO E' UN UOMO

Primo Levi’s introductory poem, or invocation, to his “memoir” (a difficult label, inasmuch as he takes some liberties generally afforded only to novelists, though everything in its essence in the book is true and speaks of his 11 months in Auschwitz), If This Is a Man (Se questo e’ un uomo in its original Italian) has a handful of English translations, none of which really satisfies me (which could break us into a great discussion of translation philosophy, but I don’t want to be the one doing the talking in this case—not yet, anyway).  I have far less problem with a memoirist taking liberties with characterizations and weather details of his own story than I do of another writer jabbing his stamp at and into another’s words.  For some reason it’s different with something like Dante’s L’Inferno, of which I enjoy three or four different English translations as much as I do the original.  In this case—and this much more modern than anything of Dante's—I’ll try and let you be the judge.  I find the original Italian just so much more powerful.  

Here is Levi’s prefatory poem first in Italian, then as translated by Stuart Woolf (who was supervised by Levi), then in an anonymous translation, and finally by my own deliberately hyper-literal “translation,” with very nearly google-translater obtuseness (meant solely as a utility for comparing the translations to the original):

Italian, original

Voi che vivete sicuri
nelle vostre tiepide case,
voi che trovate tornando a sera
il cibo caldo e visi amici:

Considerate se questo è un uomo
che lavora nel fango
che non conosce pace
che lotta per mezzo pane
che muore per un si o per un no.
Considerate se questa è una donna,
senza capelli e senza nome
senza più forza di ricordare
vuoti gli occhi e freddo il grembo
come una rana d'inverno.

Meditate che questo è stato:
vi comando queste parole.
Scolpitele nel vostro cuore
stando in casa andando per via,
coricandovi, alzandovi.
Ripetetele ai vostri figli.

O vi si sfaccia la casa,
la malattia vi impedisca,
i vostri nati torcano il viso da voi.

English, Woolf

In your warm houses,

You who find warm food

And friendly faces when you return home.

                Consider if this is a man

                Who works in mud

                Who knows no peace,

                Who fights for a crust of bread,

                Who dies by a yes or a no.

                Consider if this is a woman

                Without hair, without name,

                Without the strength to remember,

                Empty are her eyes, cold her womb,

                Like a frog in winter.

Never forget that this has happened.

Remember these words.

Engrave them in your hearts,

When at home or in the street,

When lying down, when getting up.

Repeat them to your children.

                Or may your houses be destroyed,

                May illness strike you down,

                May your offspring turn their faces from you.

English, Anonymous

You who live secure
In your warm houses
Who return at evening to find
Hot food and friendly faces:

Consider whether this is a man,
Who labours in the mud
Who knows no peace
Who fights for a crust of bread
Who dies at a yes or a no.
Consider whether this is a woman,
Without hair or name
With no more strength to remember
Eyes empty and womb cold
As a frog in winter.

Consider that this has been:
I commend these words to you.
Engrave them on your hearts
When you are in your house, when you walk on your way,
When you go to bed, when you rise.
Repeat them to your children.

Or may your house crumble,
Disease render you powerless,
Your offspring avert their faces from you.

English, Me (again, not intended as a real translation)

You all who live secure

In your warm houses,

You all who find returning at evening

Food hot and faces friendly:

Consider if this is a man

                Who works in the mud

                Who doesn’t know peace

                Who fights for half bread

                Who dies for a yes or a no.

                Consider if this is a woman,

                Without hair and without name

                Without more strength to remember

                Empty the eyes and cold the womb

                Like a frog of winter.

Meditate/Contemplate that this has happened:

I command you these words.

Engrave them in your heart

Standing in house going by street,

lying down getting up;

Repeat them to your children.

                Or your house be ruined for you,

                The sickness get in your way,

                your babies turn their face from you.

Wednesday's for Kids XIII -- FORGOTTEN SEUSS

I think it may actually be impossible to claim yourself a book-lover and yet not like, or at least appreciate (that ever snobby word for those stuffy and shallow enough to attempt to save face amidst the true bibliophiles) Dr. Seuss (his books, I mean; I don't know much about the actual man behind them).  In fact, I would be interested to know if you or someone you know may be one who actually does dislike him--err, his books, I mean (and "dislike" being the mildest, though I'm sure there's someone out there--likely a non-book lover, but perhaps not--who just flat out despises him).  But I have a problem.  My problem is indeed with his books and is two-fold: 1, there are so many of them (which, of course, is also a strength, but without which this next wouldn't happen); and 2, so many of the very best are forgotten because of what pop-culture and bookstores (the latter parcel to the first, of course) does to only a handful.

I have three favorite titles by Seuss.  None of them have I ever seen at a Barnes and Noble.  None have been made into a movie--or at least some massive wide-release travesty (thank Heaven! (though, done right, maybe they wouldn't be so bad)).  Nowhere have I found a student even who's ever heard of more than one.

I am not going to dwell on the stories, metaphors, and characters of each, but simply show their covers, list their titles, and little else.

What do I recommend?  Get the books.  Buy them.  Put them on your shelves, but not in the children's section, but right between, say, Salinger and Tennyson, where they belong.

NUMBER 1: Horton Hatches the Egg, surely forgotten in large part because of the book's big, though nonetheless great (just hackneyed by the evil Pop!), brother, Horton Hears a Who.

NUMBER 2: Scrambled Eggs Super, a long-time favorite of mine, and even before my Dad's renown for his ability to recite the entire thing word-for-word, as well as a now-favorite of my kids.

NUMBER 3: The 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins, which is a rare example of a story without rhyme, as well as one of, if not, the longest stories Seuss wrote.

(I don't know what happened to the "500"...)

Each of these books is as rife with character, fun, and real-world application as any of his classics with more mega-media face-time; I argue, however, that these are, perhaps, lucky to be at least partially forgotten, as certainly characters like Horton and the Cat in the Hat have only suffered at the attention of Hollywood's heavy, oh-so-un-holy hand.

Gee Whiz: In searching pictures of the books, I stumbled upon this of the Hebrew translation for Scrambled Eggs Super; how spectacular that they thought to reverse the cover art!

Alice in Wonderland IV -- chapter 2: JUST KEEP SWIMMING

1. Unavoidable, but highly speculative: in extension of yesterday's brief discussion on Alice's growth as representation of real world growth through childhood and adolescence (the idea (and that as supposedly subconscious inclusion by Carroll) and its connection to Tenniel's illustrations are credited to Richard Ellmann and Selwyn Goodacre, respectively) and in tandem with the odd conjoining (meta-story: they are one and yet separate) of story-Alice and Carroll (who is not exclusively the same as Dodgson), this growth away from her feet could be looked at as further evidence of predicted separation anxiety on the part of Carroll.  Alice will grow up and away from Carroll, who will miss her--and misses her terribly--once it finally happens.
2. The attribution of the male "Esquire" to this girl's foot may come Latinate languages' (French, of course, is most likely in this case) masculine gender pie or ped for foot--pied in French.
3. What of the rabbit, symbolically speaking and as contrast/foil to Alice?  Carroll intended him to be "elderly, timid, feeble, [and] nervously shilly-shallying" (from Carroll's "Alice on the Stage").
4. "...'Who in the world am I?'  Ah, that's the great puzzle!"
5. Math puzzle!  (Hint: the secret is in the bases.)
6. Many of the poems that show up in Alice are parodies of popular rhymes of the time.  Certainly they're better in contrast against the originals than alone.  Copied below is Isaac Watt's poem "Against Idleness and Mischief" (aren't you glad you didn't have to memorize these for "lessons"?).  What interests me here is not the fun (though tremendous fun it is) of Carroll's parody, but his placing it into the mouth of poor and now much frustrated Alice.  This is another change wrought upon her without her foreknowledge or consent.  I just can't let myself believe that it's simply some bizarre symptom of Wonderland on the brain, but an effect of its creator; but why then, if he's so fond of Alice, would Carroll do this to her, for she clearly is uncomfortable with it?  Thoughts?  (While reversals are a common and influential motif in Looking Glass such is not the case for Wonderland.)
7. The notion of swimming in tears has always repulsed me.
8. I wonder if Carroll was ever concerned that he might be smothering Alice, or that he maybe worried that others might have thought so.  Thankfully, in Wonderland, Alice survives the sea of tears.  Are they exclusively hers (okay, that beggars an obvious answer: Carroll, of course; but what of it?)?
9. (Not an issue for this reading: an alternative approach to this book could easily be that of inter-lingual translation.  Supposedly the mouse came from a childish misreading of "muse" in the brother's Latin grammar book, and then the subsequent faux pas of cat and mouse, not to mention (what a stupid colloquialism: "not to mention," when it's always followed by the very this it claims will not go mentioned) the foot from earlier.)
10. Interested in John Tenniel and political humor?  Well, lucky you, they go right together!  Tenniel illustrated a political cartoon in the magazine, "Punch."  Search for some of the cartoons online; they're hilarious.
11. Carroll makes his first visible appearance here at the end of chapter 2 as the Dodo.  Dodgson (have I even mentioned that Lewis Carroll is the pen name for Charles Dodgson?) stuttered and was labeled by himself and others "Dodo-Dodgson").  The other members of the party at the shore are Reverand Robinson Duckworth as, duh, the duck; Alice's older sister, Lorina, as the Lory; and her little sister, Edith, as the Eaglet.

Against Idleness and Mischief
by Isaac Watts


How doth the little busy bee

Improve each shining hour

And gather honey all the day

From every opening flower!

How skillfully she builds her cell!

How neat she spreads the wax!

And labours hard to store it well

With the sweet food she makes.

In works of labour or of skill,

I would be busy too;

For Satan finds some mischief still

For idle hands to do.

In books, or work, or healthful play,

Let my first years be passed,

That I may give for every day

Some good account at last.

If you have questions about jargon or context through any of the passages, just post a comment and I'll find the answer for you.

Huck Finn meets Oscar Wilde, and they talk about Accent

It seems that every blog out there that has anything to do with literature or language is posting opinions on the recently publicized and new edition of Huck Finn.  How could I pass up this opportunity to conform, and late, to the writing norm?  Well, I'm passing.  I just saw on my little feed updater (technical term) that The Economist's blog, Johnson, has now made public their stand.  Well, I have already stood (via Facebook, email, and a comment at unmoderatedcaucus.blogspot.com, not to mention a pertinent post on the issue at hand here at The Wall).  However, I heard a bit of local news recently (local to here in Utah) that reminds me, obliquely, of our current culture's particular tendency to change things in the name of correctness (and isn't this stupid coming from the same industry that invented shock value?).

A local theater troop is putting on Oscar Wilde's The Importance of being Earnest (or maybe it was An Ideal Husband).  Anyway, as it will be a local production, most auditioners will surely have an accent with dominant influences almost certainly Western, and likely Utahn, not to mention linguistic quirks specific even to just Utah County.  Despite this, the ad in our local paper says that interested parties must be capable of speaking with a British accent.

(Now allow me to step upon my soap box.)

...uh....   Really?

Maybe it's just me, but I think this is spectacularly stupid.  Aside from the fact that there's no such thing as a "British accent," the likelihood of a consistent accent is so slight as to render to product utterly muddled to distraction from the actual intent of this (either) brilliant play.  Of course, maybe the audience wouldn't notice; and not that I'm some expert in accents, and not that the local audience is so stupid.  Quite the contrary (either).  But if the audience is unlikely to notice discrepancies in accent, and if said accents are implemented, and also if said accents fit the pathetic stereotype United Statesians hold for Britons' accents (though apparently this director thinks there's but one), then would they notice if the actors simply spoke with their own "American" accents, or at least some other standardized accent?

I see this as precisely the opposite problem of the demonized changing of the "n-word" for slave, done in effort to palatize a book with otherwise distasteful words to our modern palate; that is using an accent one believes to be British to make more "authentic" a play that, well, can stand on its own two amply strong, well-balanced, and -proportioned feet without some misguided director's decision.  If that director wanted truly to be accurate in re-representing the accents from the time and location of the play's original and intended performance (and does anyone really think Oscar Wilde would have had such limited purview?),  that director would have to train all his actors in using accent (the noun "accent" left deliberately indefinite and abstract) not only from a specific part of England, but of the specific time.

BUT ACCENTS CHANGE WITH TIME!

Okay, I'm stopping.

I had to get that off my chest.

It's POINTLESS!

DO IT IN STANDARD ENGLISH!  Words = important.  Don't change the words.  The words alone are more than adequately representative of time and place and culture.  Accent = unimportant (well, accent nationality), unless the intent of an accent is to represent archetypes of education or social status, in which case, consider how the movie Airplane (though I've never seen it, I know the story) was translated into Italian: in the original there is a scene where an actor uses a heavy "Ebonics" accent (time and place, people).  In the Italian translation, instead of having the voice actors overdub with Italian words in an "Ebonics" accent (not only absolutely absurd, I'm sure you'll agree, but--I'm pretty sure--impossible), a deep Southern Italian accent was implemented and to equivocal effect.

So:

Dear Utah County Director of Oscar Wilde's Play, An Ideal Husband (or The Importance of being Earnest): there is a wide array of American English accents available and ample enough to supply all the linguistic needs of economic, educational, and social stereotypes present in the play.  Our English is good enough!

Okay.  Now I'm really done.

Wednesday's for Kids V -- "QUOMODO INVIDIOSULUS NOMINE GRINCHUS CHRISTI NATALEM ABROGAVERIT"

Once upon a time, I actually believed I knew enough Italian to read and understand Latin.

Seriously.

I've learned a lot since then.  For example, I actually know Italian better now than I did then (funny how this works) and for it quite pointedly realize that I actually know precisely jack squat about Latin.  And how stupid was I?  That opening sentence is like me saying I know how to fly an airplane because I've got my Boy Scouts merit badge for small boat sailing.

Despite the disillusionment, I bought what follows below.  It is the only book I own that I cannot read.  I bought it a long time ago and for no reason other than I thought it was cool.  And really, can you deny the utter coolness of How the Grinch Stole Christmas in freaking Latin?  (I mean, *!*)  There's something intrinsically fascinating--which, of course, and if we're speaking at least circumferentially of translation, is Geek for "cool" --about your favorite, or at least most nostalgic, books and/or other media in another language--and allthemoreso (yes, one word) a dead language?  Maybe it's just me....  But I can't help myself.  Languages are, well, cool.  And I have a number of my favorite books in Italian, a couple in Hebrew (despite the fact that I read Hebrew only slight less badly than Latin), and a few in French as well (which, despite my once-prejudice for the language and its mother country, is a lot closer to Italian than Latin).  I take them down periodically and flip through them.  Most of them I've even read once or twice--and even cover-to-cover--but it's not the reading, but the having, that is just awesome.  I mean, imagine this: owning and displaying copies of The Best Christmas Pageant Ever in Darug or The Lord of the Rings in Wamo!  Cool!

And even cooler: to be able to read those languages and analyze the intrinsic problems and inevitable interpretive shifts due to the semiotic transition....

(Okay, I'll stop.)

So, my recommendation (recommendation, after all, being the very object this feature is intended to feature)?  Indulge yourself in a specious interlinguistic adventure, and find a book you love in a language you don't know or have even before heard of, wait eagerly for it to arrive in the mail, then minutes after delivery quietly post the new treasure (and just touch it, hold it: feel its electricity pulse through its skin!) somewhere inconspicuous, yet available to examining eyes, and (do you feel it?) quite simply make yourself look just that much smarter than you really are (it's like a magic diet pill!) simply by having it, which, heck, when it comes right down to it isn't that great a stretch; owning a book written in a dead language does in very fact make you smarter.  Like Mozart.

Anyway, merry Christmas, everyone!

Sunday Poetry III -- Matsuo Basho, A Casual Artist and Adventurer

On the Poet's Trail:

by Michael Yamashita

Nearly three years ago, back before my most cherished of subscriptions sadly expired, I read one of my all-time favorite articles in the good periodical, National Geographic.  While I have sung NG's praises repeatedly since my childhood, this particular article came together in a rarely exquisite nexus of photography, essay, and art.  Being the bugger English snob that I am (and hypocrite to boot), I've often snubbed my nose at the "poor" writing of the photographers and scientists that generally pen for the magazine (I've since humbled myself and been humbled), though I've always praised the photography.  Also, I've always been a fan of the chosen subject matter in general, being a general subscriber to Life on Earth and the weirdness it pulls out of itself.  This article, however, I'd have never anticipated of the magazine, which I've received via grandparents, parents, and, though with less consistency, my own small investments.  It's LITERATURE, after all!  Yet, somehow and if not immediately, it made perfect sense.

I'd heard of Matsuo Basho, Japanese poet and reputed father of the haiku, but I'd never read more of his stuff than a few of those three-liners in my various literature text books.  The NG article piqued my interest, however, with its scattered Basho quotations, some minor biography, and, most of all, that combination of pictures and narrative from the lucky man who got to go mirror that--well, I want to say PILGRIMAGE, but that's not what it was.  The guy just went for a walk!

The best part of the article for me was the great word "hyohakusha," which according to NG translates to "one who moves without direction," which is a travelling descriptor I've wished for myself my entire life (just imagine: me and my steel drum, one-way ticket to Italy...), but that's another entry.  I snapped out of it and thought instead of a perfect, big-assignment writing prompt for my creative writing students.

That, too, is another entry.

I found dug up a text for Narrow Road to a Far Province and was entranced.  (There's a little bit a wikipedia, HERE, but I really recommend reading the whole thing--it's THAT worth it.)  I'd quote from that very file now, however and unfortunately, somewhere along the line I lost my file for the book and since then all the good translations have been ripped from the web.  Even Google Books has only got an excerpt of an introduction!

But I did find a translation HERE, which, while being a somewhat--or apparently--clumsy translation, yet offers a decent, free glimpse into the experience of Basho's wandering (despite my gripes with the words, the website is nicely interactive and offers notes throughout the text--always nice).  Here are a few excerpted poems:

It looks as if
Iris flowers had bloomed
On my feet --
Sandals laced in blue.

*

Bitten by fleas and lice,
I slept in a bed,
A horse urinating all the time
Close to my pillow.

(I laughed out loud when I first read this one; the other translation I read was not quite so demur.)

*

I felt quite at home,
As if it were mine,
Sleeping lazily
In this house of fresh air.

Crawl out bravely
And show me your face,
The solitary voice of a toad
Beneath the silkworm nursery.

With a powder-brush
Before my eyes,
I strolled among
Rouge-plants.

In the silkworm nursery,
Men and women
Are dressed
Like gods in ancient times.

This one was written by Basho's travel companion, Sora.  He tends to be a bit wordier than his practically terse master, though at times Sora's words tend to be less frivolous--maybe he's compensating for some literary insecurity.

*

In the utter silence
Of a temple,
A cicada's voice alone
Penetrates the rocks.

*

The night looks different
Already on July the sixth,
For tomorrow, once a year
The weaver meets her lover.

The great Milky Way
Spans in a single arch
The billow-crested sea,
Falling on Sado beyond.

*

Move, if you can hear,
Silent mound of my friend,
My wails and the answering
Roar of autumn wind.

*

On a cool autumn day,
Let us peel with our hands
Cucumbers and mad-apples
For our simple dinner.

*

This is the final poem of the journey:

As firmly cemented clam shells
Fall apart in autumn,
So I must take to the road again,
Farewell, my friends.

***

Additional note:

I've always been interested in the complexities of translation.  Translating from a language so dissimilar to our own as Japanese lends particular challenges.  Check out THESE nine translations of a single passage from Basho's work.

East of Eden XVII -- chapt16: The Golden Man with the Goat's Eyes

Chapter 16 opens with Samuel on the long road home after visiting the new Trask ranch.  Anyone willing, I think, will do his/her best thinking on a trip like this.  I do (though my greatest thinking certainly isn't anything to write a book about), and Samuel's thinking about is the goose (or rabbit, apparently--look it up) that walked over his grave.  Twice, and caused the "Welshrats."  (What an intriguing thing, the Welshrats--from the German weltschmerz, meaning world-pain--and how it's used here.  (If I knew German, I might be able to tell you why it's capitalized.  Anyone?))  He can't figure out what must have made it happen.  Not jealousy of the ranch.  Not some lost, painful memory.  Of course, he lands on it eventually, via a childhood memory of a criminal with eyes just like Cathy's, and the narrator recounts Samuel's experience seeing the Golden Man, whose eyes, like a goat's (my parents would probably argue this on behalf of their own goats), have no depth. 

Reading Questions
Chapter 16.1

1. Why doesn't Samuel trust the connection between the Golden Man and Cathy?  How does this act as evidence for Cathy's superiority as Evil?

Chapter 16.2

1. Good ol' Liza.  She hasn't even been to "the Sanchez place" and already she'll never smell anything but pigs.  Wondrous how a person of conviction, with the Lord eternally at her side (whether He likes it or not), is always right, even when she's wrong.
2. And I'm sure Liza would condemn gossip in all around her, but never be able to see it in herself, even if her distant judgments of Cathy aren't so far off the mark.
3. I expect that Liza enjoys being miserable and wouldn't have it any other way, even if contentedness is knocking at her door.
4. Yet despite his strange eccentricities, somehow she and Samuel make a beautiful--and beautifully balance--couple. 

Two Great Things (more, and of surely many more still) from Borges

Again from "The Aleph" --just two simple sentences:

"I come now to the ineffable center of my tale; it is here that a writer's hopelessness begins.  Every language is an alphabet of symbols the employment of which assumes a past shared by its interlocutors."

If you notice that these two sentences, out of context as they are, don't seem to coalesce, read them IN context.  Something about this blog is bringing me to see over and over again the subtleties wrought by context.  FASCINATING!  Take either of these sentences alone, and you could write a thesis; or, pen the right narrative and they can sit right next to each in perfect harmony.  It's kind of mind blowing.  Look at them!  They shouldn't be able to go together!

(http://josephcenter.blogspot.com/2010/09/trouble-with-context.html)

***

Notes from the translator, Andrew Hurley, on the collection, "The Maker," which has particular bearing upon the blog's brief tangent on ascribing meaning to words, especially across languages:

The Spanish title of this "heterogeneous" volume of prose and poetry ... is El hacedor, and hacedor is a troublesome word for a translator in English.  JLB seems to be thinking of the Greek word poeta, which means "maker," since a "true and literal" translation of poeta into Spanish would indeed be hacedor.  Yet hacedor is in this translator's view, and in the view of all those native speakers he has consulted, a most uncommon word.  It is not used in Spanish for "poet" but instead makes on think of someone who makes things with his hands, a kind of artisan, perhaps, or perhaps even a tinkerer.  The English word maker is perhaps strange too, yet it exists; however, it is used in English (in such phrases as "he went to meet his Maker" and the brand name Maker's Mark) in a way that dissuades one from seizing upon it immediately as the "perfect" translation for hacedor.  (The Spanish word hacedor would never be used for "God," for instance.)  Eliot Weinberger has suggested to me, quite rightly, perhaps, that JLB had in mind the Scots word makir, which means "poet."  But there are other cases: Eliot's dedication of The Waste Land to Ezra Pound, taken from Dante--il miglior fabbro, where fabbro has exactly the same range as hacedor.  Several considerations seem to militate in favor of the translation "artificer": first, the sense of someone's making something with his hands, or perhaps "sculptor," for one of JLB's favorite metaphors for poetry was at one time sculpture; second, the fact that the second "volume" in the volume Fictions is clearly titled Artifices; third, the overlap between art and craft or artisanry that is implied in the word, as in the first story in this volume.  But a translation decision of this kind is never easy and perhaps never "done"; one wishes one could call the volume Il fabbro, or Poeta, or leave it El hacedor.  The previous English translation of this volume in fact opted for Dreamtigers.  Yet sometimes a translator is spared this anguish (if he or she finds the key to the puzzle in time to forestall it); in this case there is an easy solution.  I quote from Emir Rodriguez Monegal's Jorge Luis Borges: A Literary Biography, p. 438: 'Borges was sixty when the ninth volume of his complete works came out.... For the new book he had thought up the title in English: The Maker, and had translated it into Spanish as El hacedor; but when the book came out in the United States the American translator preferred to avoid the theological implications and used instead the title of one of the pieces: Dreamtigers.'  And so a translation problem becomes a problem created in the first place by a translation!  (Thanks to Eliot Weinberger for coming across this reference in time  and bringing it to my attention.)"